*
FYI: The site is not open to the public. We were lucky that no one turned us away, but unfortunately, this beautiful place is only open to members. Sorry!
Under Our Noses: The Philosophy Works
*
*
“Right near you in Wallkill,” my friend said, about a year ago. “We used to go to events there—concerts and crafts sales. Quality crafts. Really beautiful grounds.”
Then, last spring, we got a postcard in the mail from the School of Practical Philosophy at 846 Borden Circle, in Wallkill, New York. It announced the Philosophy Works Introductory Course beginning on April 12, 2022. I was intrigued, but I didn’t get around to looking at the website (www.philosophyworks.org/wallkill) until June. My Zoom schedule being full, I wasn’t as interested in a course as I was in the place itself.
Finally, on a Friday afternoon, we found our way to the site after several wrong turns. As far as we could see, nobody was around. We parked near a stately house and followed the noise of a weed whacker to where a man was clearing off the stone patio behind the house.
He turned off his machine, introduced himself, and proceeded to give us an abridged history of the organization and the Borden estate.
Perhaps some folks in the senior category remember Elsie the Cow, the mascot of Borden Milk?
(https://bordenestate.com/) John G. Borden, son of Gail Borden, the inventor of condensed milk, chose the site in Wallkill for his Home Farm in the 1880s. His daughter, Marion, took over running the business after his death in 1891. Under her auspices, the Queen Anne-Tudor style mansion was built. She was a great benefactor to the area, funding the library, portions of local school buildings, and other projects.
To learn more about the Bordens, go to this link:
http://abouttown.us/articles/marion-the-last-wallkill-borden/
The Borden Estate/Philosophy Works site is delightfully peaceful. We have visited twice so far and no one has chased us away.
Cat Bath
*
*
*
When the cat bathes itself
at the bed’s foot,
soft thumps
against the curve of my leg
take me home
to my child self.
Then I always had
an animal curled up fur tight
sharing my dreaming bed
nosing purr close
kneading an arm
sheathed claws
tiny pain pricks
supple companion
chose the king’s spot
the royal feline middle
and I, careful not to disturb
adjusted my legs around
its warm weight
How the Karakesh Chronicles Began
*
*
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about my fantasy-adventure series.
Tangled in Magic, the first book of the Karakesh Chronicles, began as a handmade gift for my twin godchildren, then 12 years old. It was titled The Three Seductions. I printed out two copies, folded and sewed the pages, and glued fancy paper to the book board covers.
I even drew some illustrations.
The main characters are the twins Agatha and Malcolm, who live in the dangerous, magical kingdom of Karakesh. Agatha, age fifteen, embarks on a quest to find Malcolm, who is held prisoner by an evil warlock.
During the next five years, I wrote stories for magazines. One of my short stories was published in Stinkwaves. The editors of Stinkwaves, Nicole and Tevin Hansen, sent out a call for submissions to their authors. I offered the first chapters of The Three Seductions. They wrote back: Send the whole book.
Handersen Publishing is a small independent press that carries the work of the editors as well as a widespread group of authors. As a team, the Hansens are both accessible and talented.
We ended up merging two short novels together: Agatha’s search for Malcolm, and their harrowing journey back to Hawk Hill to repossess their home from the greedy warlock, Santer. In order to keep track of their wanderings across Karakesh, I made a map.
Tangled in Magic appeared in print in 2017, with illustrations by Alison Gagne Hansen.
But I couldn’t stop writing about the kingdom of Karakesh. I had so many questions: Who was the little girl Agatha found staked out to die in the forest? What happened to her? The answers came in Book II, Guided by Magic (2018). In that book, two sisters are kidnapped and put to work in the dwarves’ mines. Such practices surely caused trouble in Karakesh. My wonderings about Karakesh’s royal government merged with a selkie legend to inspire Book III, Awakening Magic (2019). What if a girl is half selkie and half human? Does she belong on land or in the sea? Demara faced that problem in Book IV, Ripples of Magic (2019).
The final published book of the Karakesh Chronicles follows Bimi Lightfoot, the adopted brother of Demara from Book IV. Bimi Lightfoot’s faerie mother gave him away when he was a baby. But who is his father? Someday, Bimi promises himself, he’ll seek out both his parents.
That day comes sooner than Bimi expects, when his faerie cousin, Liri Flare, sweeps him into the sky on a mission to steal a horse. Once away from his adoptive family, Bimi sets out to find his mother and learn the truth about his father. He gets help from some of the magical folk of Karakesh, but other encounters are downright life-threatening.
What started out as a present for two children in the family expanded into the realization of a lifelong dream: to have my stories (and illustrations) published. It’s been a great gift.
Find the Karakesh Chronicles on Amazon at
https://www.amazon.com/Tangled-Magic-Karakesh-Chronicles-Ellis
or from www.handersenpublishing.com
Sad Time
*
*
Step outside myself
Watch the morning unfold
Watch him shuffle to the bathroom
Watch me coach him through the shower:
*
Wash your face with soap
Use the bar of soap under your arms
In your crotch, the butt too
Hold out your hand
Here’s shampoo
That’s my towel and
This is yours
Underwear, incontinent pad
Arms up, deodorant underneath
Now brush your teeth
*
He is so grateful.
Thank you, dear.
For trimming my toenails
For shaving my beard.
Thank you, dear.
*
Oh, if only I could say
Thank you, dear God,
For this life of service
Thank you for his gratitude
Thank you for the restrictions
Thank you for the loss
Tell me how to say it.
Teach me how to believe it.
Day Care
*
*
He has his pull-ups on.
I’ve shaved him. (It’s fun.)
He’s got just one hearing aid.
Lost the other one.
He’s had his breakfast,
taken his pills
brushed his teeth.
*
“Where are we?” he says.
I tell him again.
*
“I’ll be here when you get home,”
I say.
“You don’t need to call me.
You’re safe.”
*
I send him out to the van.
Watch him climb in
wipe away familiar tears
like a mother.
Rail Trail I
*
*
Honeysuckle breeze carries
scent of cut grass.
Mower drones
behind shaggy hickories.
He stops to listen.
Maples flutter,
serious oaks think
about making acorns.
*
Slow walking
One step to his two-step
shuffle-crunch gravel.
On the verges
phlox lilac pink
dandelion fluff
sinister poison ivy,
innocent in shiny green
*
One chorus of
Zippity-do-dah,
He’s happy
under the canopy
shade and sun
in his eternal now.
Satya and Books
*
“I don’t read,” Satya says.
They are sitting in Satya’s kitchen. Samantha is in one of the chairs. Satya is on the floor with her back against the dishwasher.
Samantha looks at the stack of books on the kitchen table. One is about Mary Magdalene. Another is called Eyebody Technique.
“What do you mean, you don’t read?” Sam asks, gesturing to the books on the table.
“Oh, a page that looks interesting, yes, but not novels. I can’t sit still that long.”
Samantha thinks of her own bookish habits. Sometimes she’ll have three novels going simultaneously, and one for the gym, and an audiobook for the car. She especially likes to listen to Jane Austen on the way to work. Austen can make Sam laugh out loud.
Satya doesn’t strike Sam as the restless type. Sam knows that Satya watches videos. Sam squirms in her chair and lets out a huff of air. She doesn’t like this feeling of passing judgment, either on Satya for not reading, or on herself for spending so much time in books.
Sam has always been surrounded by books. As a child, Sam’s bookcase in her bedroom was only one quarter the size of the wall-to-wall bookcases in the dining room, the ones her father built. Sam read and reread the Little House books, the Narnia Chronicles, and all of Marguerite Henry’s horse stories. Laura and Lucy were as well known to Sam as her friends at school. In fantasy play with her friends, they acted out events in the books. Sam remembers that she always chose to be Susan, Lucy’s older sister. “Why Susan?” Sam wonders.
There were the E. Nesbit books, also, and George MacDonald’s fairy stories. Edward Eager’s magic books. For years, Sam believed intensely that one day she could find a magic coin or step into another world. Sam and her friend, Marcia, used to stand next to an ornate lamppost near the school playground with their eyes squeezed shut, waiting for a faun to call them into Narnia.
But in the silence while Satya stares at the floor and Sam sips her tea, Sam returns to Susan in Narnia. Susan was a warrior, strong and decisive. The exact opposite of Sam’s girlchild self who was timid, too eager to please, afraid to speak her opinion—it’s taken years for Sam to step away from those qualities. To be honest, she’s not gotten that far away from little Samantha.
Who was Satya when she was a girl? Was she as ethereal and unusual then? If so, she would have been teased and bullied by her peers, that’s almost certain.
“I went to a private girls’ school,” Satya says, as if reading Sam’s mind. “The girls tortured me. I didn’t have a single friend there. I hid in the library and read books.”
Fans of Narnia, Harry Potter, and the other books mentioned above might enjoy my Karakesh Chronicles:
Better than the Alternative
*
It was a sobering experience,
trying on brassieres in Target.
*
Full disclosure:
It’s been at least four years
since I bought a bra.
And probably more
than four pounds.
But I was tired of
gorilla underwear.
*
In lingerie,
I got the size I was before—
34B.
No underwires, you know.
They obstruct the chi flow.
But look at the flesh
bulging over the sides.
(Don’t look at the belly below.)
*
When did this S shape
creep up on me?
When did my waist ascend?
The size I thought I was
I am no more.
Remember 32A? 32B?
*
To me in the mirror, I say,
“This is what 71 looks like.
You are healthy.
You are alive.
You’ve escaped Covid.”
*
I hang the lacy 34Bs
on the return rack:
the polka-dotted beige satin,
the striped gray cotton,
the black floral.
*
Again, I scan the displays. Pick out any 36B.
Buy the ones that fit.
Salat Al Maghrib*
Blessed are the birds
grackle bullies shriek,
scuffle over sunflower seeds,
muscling away patient goldfinches
cardinals wait on bare oak branches
*
Blessed are the dry oak leaves,
pale as deerskin
worn winter thin
that shiver and tumble,
grounded by bitter March wind
*
Blessed is the wind
sweeping in from the North
Only ice fairies fly
above the frosted pines
*
Blessed are the pines
moaning adagios
windswept violas and bassoons
harmonize at twilight
*
Blessed is the twilight
sapphire and steel
calligraphy of branches
writing the ballad of night
—————————————
*Islamic sunset prayer
Tangled Magic 